Fabian Debora (left) and Louis Perez in Sydney. Both men escaped from life in a downtown Los Angeles gang and now use their experience to help others do the same. Picture: Supplied Source: news.com.au

FABIAN Debora was six years old when he first started running heroin for his father.

He grew up in Boyle Heights, "one of the poorest housing projects west of the Mississippi", in downtown Los Angeles at the height of the crack cocaine epidemic of the 1980s.

Boyle Heights was also home to eight rival gangs - seven Latino and one African American - who would go at it on a daily basis.

His father, a drug dealer, used to take him to the park for "quality time".

"He'd say 'Come on let's go play basketball, but you're going to hold this in your pocket, and when I call you you're going to give me a red one, blue one or yellow one'," Mr Debora said.

"And so when the police would come they would have him and his friends against the wall, but the police wouldn't have the slightest idea that the little kid playing ball had the drugs in his pocket."

At the same time his father started introducing him to the belief system that the LAPD was the enemy, and "you don't cry, you don't tell".

With his father in and out of jail, the only role models around him were the gang members that lived in Boyle Heights.

"At that time all I could see was gangs, gangs, gangs and I didn't want to be a gang member but the fact was that I didn't have an older brother or an older father figure," he said.

"Eventually I couldn't beat the gangs and so I joined them and that was the worst mistake I ever made, but at the time it was the right thing to do for me."

It wasn't until the age of 30 that Mr Debora left gang life and kicked the drug addiction he had been battling for 15 years. Now 37, he is the head substance abuse counsellor at Homeboy Industries, the organisation he credits with helping him turn his life around.

Louis Perez, manager of one of Homeboy industries' five vocational training businesses Homeboy Bakery, grew up in East LA, near Boyle Heights.

He was in kindergarten when he first started idolising local gang members.

"We'd be playing hide and go seek and as we're running out to hide you've got a shoot out, gunfire right in front of us, and when you see that at an early age it's just like 'Oh my god'," Mr Perez said.

"One guy pops out two guns and he's letting off and I'm intrigued, I'm in awe."

Mr Perez said: "It's the same like everything you see on TV."

"There's from the bottom end to the top end, from robbing, stealing and beating someone up to kidnapping and murdering and home invasion at the high end. You know there's just a lot of pain."

Mr Perez says his entry into gang life was a self-fulfilling prophecy.

"On my way back from school the guys on the corner would be like 'Hey little homie, come and kick it'," he said.

"I got jumped into my gang at 13 but I was already drawn to it at a younger age."

As well as being the age he started his criminal career, 13 was also when Mr Perez was first incarcerated.

But it was also the year he met Father Greg.

"When you're in the system, word of mouth is everything. In prison if they know you're a gangster, they know you're credible, and someone's like 'Homeboy Industries will hire you no matter how you look or your background' - that travels, right?"

"Father Greg goes in to juvenile facilities and passes out his card - that's how I got connected to Homeboys in my youth, he gave me his card and said 'you're worth more'."

Mr Perez maintained a relationship with Father Greg over the next 13 years that he was in and out of jail. In that time he was arrested for gun charges, drug sales and possession charges, assault and a murder.

This is a hallmark of the work that Homeboy Industries does; maintaining a relationship with gang members until they are ready to change, and staying tolerant during any relapses.

Father Greg "G-Dog" Boyle (left), who works by the idea that "nothing stops a bullet like a job". Picture: www.gdogthemovie.comSource: news.com.au

One time after Mr Perez got out of jail, he got involved running a youth program at Homeboy Industries and was starting to change his life when his friend Fat Boy was shot dead.

"He was a guy I was living vicariously through, he'd graduated from high school and was going to college," he said.

Despite this Fat Boy was struggling to get a job because he still had the appearance of a gang member.

"Our last conversation was about him going to Homeboys [to get a job], then later on that day he was killed," he said.

"He was gunned down, shot three times in the back of the head and, you know, retaliation was the first thing that came up and I was lost."

He was about to receive grant money to start a boat program for younger children.

"And then the internal affected me. I felt I wasn't worthy, self-sabotage occurred and I went back to the streets, I started using drugs, lost myself out there, got arrested and was looking at 15 years, and that was my last run."

The case against him ended up being dropped because the police falsified parts of his case.

"I got out and I went to do the same thing again, because that's all I knew how to do," he said.

"But in that time that I got out I went to go and get high and this lady that knew me, she seen me all healthy again, she said 'You're getting high already again?'

"I couldn't be honest at first, but then I was like 'Yeah', then she was like 'You need help, you need to go to a program'."

Mr Perez went to a halfway house for parolees.

"I started doing the 12-step process, went to college, became a straight A student ... then back to Homeboys, and I've been there ever since."

Now 33, it has been seven years since the last time he got out of jail.

Fabian Debora is grateful that Father Greg was there when he was finally ready to change his life.

"It takes commitment. It took me 15 years, I didn't change till the age of 30, think about that," he said.

"It takes willingness, commitment and also programs like Homeboy Industries - there needs to be people in place that are willing to have the patience and the understanding and the relationship with the individual."

During his 15 years of drug addiction Mr Debora was what he calls a "habitual criminal".

"I would steal cars, conceal weapons, get caught with gun possession - I started at 12 with my first gun possession in middle school," he said.

"I would go to jail for truancy and drug possession, stolen vehicles, domestic violence, it just started to progress, progress, progress."

His drug addiction also progressed, from marijuana, to crack cocaine, to LSD and eventually to meth.

"That led to two attempts at suicide. And my second attempt was what led me to recover."

Mr Debora now uses his traumatic experience with drugs to give back to his community.

"The best way for me to use that was to get my education, go back to school and become a state certified drug counsellor in order to understand the language and the professionalism," he said.

"But at the same time [I am] with the people who are in the struggle, I know both sides of the coin."

Mr Perez says the Homeboy model is successful because Father Greg has helped change the lives of Homeboy Industries' 220 senior staff and now they're the ones running the organisation.

Mr Perez says there's no "cookie-cutter program" to see which kids are going to join a gang and which are not.

"There are a lot of people who overcome it and don't go into gangs but when you're growing up in poverty there's a lack of a lot of things.

"The ones who are succeeding are the ones living a criminal lifestyle so you kind of get drawn to that.

"You're pretty much confined to a four block radius and if your radius consists of a lot of gangs then majority of the time it's just bound to happen.

"But if someone knows Fabian from back in the days, how he was, what he did, and I see Fabian doing what he's doing now I'm like 'Oh f**k, he's really changed and I can do it too'."

To learn more about Homeboy Industries, and what you can do to help, click here.

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Comments on this story

ASP of NSW Posted at 3:36 PM March 06, 2013

What a great story. Not to put a dampner on it though, I must ask: "How does one allowed into Australia with a criminal record like that?"

Seline Posted at 3:13 PM March 06, 2013

We need more success stories like this in the world. My hat off to them.

Peter of Perth Posted at 3:00 PM March 06, 2013

G-dog, changing the world, one human being at a time. Fabulous! The guy deserves a Nobel prize but is probably too humble to accept it.

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